Word origin for technology

I have always loved history. There is a deep seeded belief in me that it is vitally important to know where we came from in order to know where we are going. As a person who calls himself a technologist I wanted to understand where the word technology comes from in order to better to understand where technology is going. In this post I examine the origin of the word technology in a hope of better understanding its evolution and thus purpose in my practice as a technologist.

It’s Greek to Me

Technology is not an old word in English. The ancient Greeks used the word techne which meant skill with art, or craft. In fact Plato and Plotinus had an entire hierarchy of knowledge that expanded in an ascending scale from crafts to science and it moved from the physical to the intellectual. Technical art ranked somewhere in the middle of this schema.

Aristotle had a more neutral, simpler and far less value-laden concept of techne, which he described in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6, Chapters 3 and 4, where he used architecture as his example. He defined techne as a “rational faculty exercised in making something…a productive quality exercised in combo with true reason.” Aristotle believed that the business of techne is to “bring something into existence which has its efficient cause in the maker and not in itself.” It is also important to note that Aristotle related techne to the crafts and sciences, most notably through mathematics.

To the Greeks, work with the hands was inferior to philosophical speculation and techne was a more restricted term than the capacious modern term of technology that we use today. Since the Greeks use of the word techne was more focused, many classical thinkers believed that the Greeks were just as mistrustful of technological change as they were with political and social change.

When in Rome

By contrast the Romans had a much deeper appreciation for techne than their Greek counterparts. In De Natura Deorum the Roman philosopher Cicero praised the human ability to transform the environment and create a “second nature”. Other Roman poets praised techne as well with the construction of roads and the conveniences of well-built villas.

The Roman poet Statius devoted an entire poem to praising techne and technological progress. The Roman writer Plity the Elder too often praised techne and technological progress with his writings of the skilled laborers of the day.

Medieval Times

The term technology did not exist in the Middle Ages. Writers of the time instead used the word mechanical arts when referencing crafts and art with a physical aspect such as architecture, weaponry, agriculture, commerce and theatre. What we would call technological innovation during the Middle Ages typically took place with little reference to scientific knowledge or information.

The Renaissance

It is during this time period that a full expression of the modern attitude toward technology appeared. In his 1627 book New Atlantis, Francis Bacon imagined a perfect society whose king was advised by scientists and who’s engineers were organized into research groups at an institution that was called Salomon’s House. These scientists and engineers could predict the weather, had invented refrigeration, submarines, flying machines, loudspeakers and conducted amazing medical procedures. Bacon’s vision later served as the inspiration to others to form the Royal Society in London in 1662,

Danke

We own thanks to Germany for their broader definition of words like teknologie and the even broader technik. In fact in the early 20th century the word technik was translated into English as technics. Teknologie, from 1775 , meant a system of classification for the practical arts until it was abandoned in 1840.

In the 1800’s, German engineers made the word technik a central part of their self-definition and elaborated on a discourse that related the word to philosophy, economics and higher culture. In fact the word technik meant the “totality of tools, machines, systems and processes used in the practice arts and engineering.”

Present Meaning

It was somewhere between 1820 and 1910 that the word technology acquired its present meaning. The word, however, remained unstable until the later half of the 20th century where it evolved into vague abstraction that was further complicated in the 1990’s when newspapers, stock traders and bookstores made technology a synonym for computers, telephones and ancillary devices as David Nye argues in his book Technology Matters: Questions to Live With.

The word technology has only be part of the English language for a little over 100 years where it has come to reference all of the skills, machines and systems one might study at a technical university, or a term for complex systems of machines and the techniques in which we use to operate them.

Why This Matters?

Technology empowerment relies on the understanding that the word holds many different meanings to many different people. In some respects the word holds cultural and societal attitudes deeply towards it, its uses and its teachings. In modern times the word is so abstract that if you were to Google “What is Technology?” you would receive over 3 billion results.

It is my belief that the culture in which the technology is going to be used, served and taught should be the one to clearly define it. In order to accomplish this we must look to the past to see how the word’s meaning has evolved over time and then look towards the future to understand how the word will continue to evolve and then prepare ourselves and our learners for those inevitable shifts that are most likely to occur.

References

Nye, D. E. (2006). Technology matters: Questions to live with. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Whitney, E. (2004). Medieval Science and Technology. Greenwood Publishing Group.

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Top Definitions
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Scientific

This shows grade level based on the word’s complexity.

[ tek-nol—uh-jee ]

/ tɛkˈnɒl ə dʒi /

This shows grade level based on the word’s complexity.

noun, plural tech·nol·o·gies for 4.

the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.

the application of this knowledge for practical ends.

the terminology of an art, science, etc.; technical nomenclature.

a scientific or industrial process, invention, method, or the like.

the sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization.

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Origin of technology

First recorded in 1605–15, technology is from the Greek word technología systematic treatment. See techno-, -logy

OTHER WORDS FROM technology

an·ti·tech·nol·o·gy, nounsu·per·tech·nol·o·gy, noun, plural su·per·tech·nol·o·gies.

Words nearby technology

technol., technological, technological unemployment, technologist, technologize, technology, technology agreement, technophile, technophobe, technophobia, technopop

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Words related to technology

How to use technology in a sentence

The company completed a proof-of-concept demonstration of their technology on a Caterpillar engine at Argonne National Laboratory.
The dance-video company—this is how you know it’s important—already has a technology partner.
While it’s always been great as a quick-and-easy way to increase page speed, the privacy concerns have been voiced over and over again since the technology’s very inception.
Unfortunately, the pandemic is creating an opportunity for this technology.

The next administration should recommit to Mission Innovation and spearhead international efforts to bring new technologies to market.
Complete male reproductive independence would also hinge on artificial womb technology, which also made headlines in 2014.
In the absence of cultural shifts, then, new reproductive technology might not matter as much for women as it would for men.
Adam Thierer is a senior research fellow with the Technology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
A step-by-step plan to break from your various technology addictions.
The technology exists to keep us from ever losing a commercial airliner over open seas ever again.
He saw my look and said, «Oops, I mean this milestone in paper technology once it is announced to the world.»
A college is not designed to train and discipline the mind, but to utilize science, and become a school of technology.
In many processes of chemical technology filtration plays an important part.
Specialists in science and technology, the peers of those abroad, are plentiful on every hand.
He is presently engaged in a project that deals with the applications of nuclear technology to art identification.

British Dictionary definitions for technology

noun plural -gies

the application of practical sciences to industry or commerce

the methods, theory, and practices governing such applicationa highly developed technology

the total knowledge and skills available to any human society for industry, art, science, etc

Derived forms of technology

technological (ˌtɛknəˈlɒdʒɪkəl), adjectivetechnologically, adverbtechnologist, noun

C17: from Greek tekhnologia systematic treatment, from tekhnē art, skill

Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for technology

The use of scientific knowledge to solve practical problems, especially in industry and commerce.

The specific methods, materials, and devices used to solve practical problems.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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From Ancient Greek τεχνολογία (tekhnologia, «systematic
treatment (of grammar)»), from τέχνη (tekhne, «art») + -λογία.

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June 11^th 2009

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For a while there, couple of decades ago, it was pretty common to hear people talking about “the state of the art” and meaning leading-edge advanced technology.

This really was a fitting phrase since the word technology in most dictionary definitions harkens back to art.

Technology evolved from an originally Greek word technologia, but got imported into English back in 1615.

Now, and even back to the original Greek, technology has been a careful, thoughtful, systematic approach to doing something; a technique.

Technique as a word came from the same source but came to English a little later through French.

The first part of the word, techn actually did mean “art” or “craft” from Greek, while the second half logy means more literally “the writings on” or “the accumulated knowledge about.”

This construct means that technology could be figuratively translated to mean “the field of knowledge about the art.”

The American Heritage Dictionary takes the techn root back beyond Greek to Indo-European teks meaning to weave, linking it to the root of the word textile.

These days the art in question is more likely to be developing the next generation of handheld devices, or the art of decoding DNA sequences, as opposed to weaving skills.

But when technology first arose as a word back in Greek, the arts then being systematically organized were things like grammar.

Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog. He’s also the author of several books including his latest History of Wine Words – An Intoxicating Dictionary of Etymology from the Vineyard, Glass, and Bottle.

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Scientists are uniquely qualified to describe the universe in numbers and equations, but sometimes it takes an imaginative novelist to distill discoveries into words.

For his book “Brave New Words,” freelance lexicographer Jeff Prucher uncovered a slew of words that many people assume came from science, but actually originated in the pulpy pages of early science fiction. Here are four of his favorites.

Zero-gravity: While most people associate the term with outer space, “zero gravity” first described the center of the Earth. In 1938, fairly obscure writer Jack Binder imagined a momentary weightlessness while traveling from our planet’s core to the surface. Arthur C. Clarke later shortened it to “zero-g” in his 1952 space novel “Islands in the Sky.”

Computer virus: Dave Gerrold is probably most famous for his “Star Trek” episode about a different kind of overproducing nuisance (“The Trouble With Tribbles,” first broadcast in 1967). But in 1972, he used the analogy of a “virus” to describe self-replicating software in his book “When Harlie Was One,” about a computer that thinks it’s human.

The term actually appeared in print a short time after researchers spotted the first computer virus spreading through ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet.

“It’s hard to tell if the author knew about viruses when he wrote it,” says Prucher. But he’s pretty sure that “they didn’t call that first computer virus a virus.” The earliest scientific reference came a decade later, according to Prucher’s research.

Robotics: In 1920, a playwright coined “robot” from the Czech word for “forced labor.” It took two decades for science fiction writer Isaac Asimov to expand the word into the field of “robotics.” Prucher says that it took another two decades for mainstream outlets, such as the Times (London), to write about the real-world study of “robotics.”

“A lot of people know this came from science fiction,” Prucher says. “But I include it on my list because it’s one of the only real sciences to have been originally named in science fiction.”

Pressure suit: This defining piece of an astronaut’s wardrobe came from E.E. Smith. “Curiously, his pressure suits were furred,” says Prucher, citing his list, “an innovation not replicated by NASA.”

Of course, just as with science, this list constantly changes as new information comes to light. Last month, Prucher thought that author Jack Williamson invented the term “genetic engineering” in 1941. Mr. Williamson had come up with it on his own, but an online commenter directed Prucher to an interview in which the sci-fi writer admits that “now I understand that some scientist beat me by a couple of years.”

Prucher welcomes such corrections. “I certainly can’t read everything,” he says. “So, my book was partly crowd-sourced.”

“Brave New Words” and his continuing work contribute to the Oxford English Dictionary’s science fiction project, currently posted at jessesword.com/sf. At the website, fans can contribute to the etymologies of more sci-fi firsts, such as “deep space,” “ion drive,” and “gas giant.”

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I’m trying to trace the origins and rise in popularity of the abbreviation «tech» from «technology.» From what I can tell, the term began taking off in popular culture around the early to mid-1980s, but I’m wondering where it started to appear first and how and why it became so ubiquitous from then to now. Any help appreciated.

I’ve consulted Tom Chatfield’s book «Netymology,» which traces the origins of many tech-related terms, but doesn’t include «tech» specifically. I can see from this Collins Dictionary usage graph that the word «tech» started to rise in popularity in the early to mid-1980s. Google’s Ngram Viewer also seems to confirm this timeline. I’ve also consulted some articles in the NYTs and New Yorker by Steve Lohr and Ben Yagoda about the origins and rise of popular technology-related phrases and words, but they focused on tracing words like «hacker» and «Big Data.» I’m specifically interested in why, how, and where «tech» began to rise, in the context of being related to the Internet, software, hardware, etc. It’s been suggested that it might have come out of science fiction circles around the 1960s/70s, but I’m trying to run this down.

What I’m really driving at is: I can tell with some clarity from Google’s Ngram and date-restricted searches when «tech» as an abbreviation for technology began its rise, but I can’t tell the how, where, or why of that rise. I’m new to etymological research so was wondering if any of you could point me in the right direction as far as the right tools to use to figure these questions out.

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He Origin of technology , Being considered as the long development of systematic techniques to make things and to carry out activities, was born of the first men (or homínidos) more than 3 million years ago.

The term technology Is a combination of the Greek word techne»art, crafts», with logos,»word», meant in Greece a discourse on the arts, in both theories and practices.

When it first appeared in English in the seventeenth century, it was used to represent a discussion of applied arts only, and gradually these»arts»became the object of designation.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the term encompassed a growing range of means, processes and ideas, as well as tools and machines.

By the middle of the century, technology was defined by phrases such as»the means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment.»

Even these general definitions have been criticized by observers who point to the increasing difficulty of distinguishing between scientific investigation And technological activity.

However, the technology emerged long before there were even written methods. Technology, as the basis of human development, originated in prehistory through the discovery and use of fire and the first tools of men.

You may be interested What are the Branches of Technology?

Origin of technology: Prehistory

Paleolithic Era: General Considerations

Essentially, techniques are methods for creating new tools and products, and the ability to construct such artifacts is a determining characteristic of human species.

Other species make artifacts, such as bees when they build hives made to deposit their honey, birds make nests and beavers build prey.

But these attributes are the result of patterns of instinctive behavior and can not be varied to suit rapidly changing circumstances.

Humanity, in contrast to other species, does not possess highly developed instinctive reactions, but has the capacity to think systematically and creatively about techniques.

Thus, humans can consciously innovate and modify the environment in a way that no other species has achieved.

A monkey can sometimes use a stick to beat the bananas of a tree, but a man can create the stick as a cutting tool and remove a lot of bananas.

At some point in the transition between the two, the hominid, the first species similar to man, emerges.

By virtue of its tool-maker nature, man is therefore a technologist from the beginning, and the history of technology embraces the whole evolution of mankind.

You may be interested Primitive Technology: 9 Tools and Artifacts .

Use of tools in the Paleolithic

The use of tools by early humans was in part a process of discovery and evolution.

Early humans evolved from a species of hominid fodder that were already bipedal, with a brain mass about one-third of modern humans.

The use of tools remained relatively unchanged for most of early human history.

Approximately 50,000 years ago, arose the use of tools and complex sets of behaviors, which many archaeologists believe are connected with the emergence of a completely modern language.

First inventions: Oldowan

The Oldowan (or I mode) was the first stone tool extended in the archaeological industry in prehistory (it predates Lomekwian tools in a single site dated 3.3 million years ago).

Oldowan tools were used during the Lower Paleolithic, 2.6 million years ago until 1.7 million years ago, by ancient hominids in much of Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. This technology industry was followed by the most sophisticated Achelian industry.

The term Oldowan is taken from the site of the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where Oldowan’s early lyticism was discovered by archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s.

However, some contemporary archaeologists and paleoanthropologists prefer to use the term Mode 1 tools to designate the pebble tool industries (including Oldowan), with Mode 2 designating bifacally worked tools (including achele axes), Mode 3 designating tools Prepared core and so on.

You may be interested The First Inventions of Man and its Importance .

Achelous Industry

It is an archeological industry manufacturing stone tools characterized by distinctive oval and»ax»pear shaped associated with early humans.

Achelian tools were produced during the Lower Paleolithic period in Africa and much of Western Asia, South Asia and Europe, and are typically found with remains of Homo erectus.

It is believed that Achelian technologies first developed in Africa from Oldowan’s most primitive technology for 1.76 million years ago by Homo habilis. Achelian tools represent the dominant technology for the origin and much of human history.

The fire

The discovery and use of fire, a simple energy source with many deep uses, was a turning point in the technological evolution of humanity.

The exact date of his discovery is not known. Evidence of burnt animal bones in the Cradle of Humanity suggests that the domestication of fire occurred before the first Ma (Mega annum).

In turn, the academic consensus indicates that Homo erectus had controlled the fire for 500,000 or 400,000 years.

The fire, fed with wood and charcoal, allowed the first humans to cook their food to increase their digestibility, improve their nutritional value and expand the number of foods that could be eaten.

Clothes and coat

Other advances of humanity that enhance the origin of technology were clothing and shelter. The adoption of both technologies can not be accurately dated, but they were a key to the progress of humanity.

As the Paleolithic era progressed, housing became more sophisticated and more elaborate. 380,000 years ago, humans built temporary wooden huts.

The clothing, adapted from hunted animal skins, helped humanity expand into colder regions. Humans began to migrate from Africa to Eurasia, among others, 200,000 years ago.

References

Jon Agar. (2009). On the origin of technology. United Kingdom: Free Press.
Robert Angus Buchanan. (2017). History of technology. August 10, 2017, of Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Website: britannica.com.
Nye, D. E. (2006). Technology matters: Questions to live with. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Whitney, E. (2004). Medieval Science and Technology. Greenwood Publishing Group.
Clark, J.G.D. (1969). World prehistory: a new outline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ian Tattersall, Masters of the Planet, the search for our human origins, 2012, Palgrave Macmillan, chapter 6, pp. 124-125, ISBN 978-0-230-10875-2.
Heinzelin, Jean de; Clark, JD; 284 (5414): 625-629. PMID 10213682. doi: 10.1126 / science.284.5414.625. White, T; Hart, W; Renne, P; Woldegabriel, G; Beyene, Y; Vrba, E (April 1999). «Environment and Behavior of 2.5-Million-Year-Old Bouri Hominids». Science.

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For years, the Oxford Dictionary Online (ODO) has been making headlines for accepting words that are widely used on the Internet as part of the English vocabulary, thereby officiating these words into the language.

Some of these «new words» can only be used within the context of or only on the Internet, while other existing words are now getting a new identity that carry alternate meanings, and hence, uses. The rising use of acronyms and abbreviations have also changed the way we use English.

Today, we are going to look at 20 of these terms and meanings which have created enough of an impact and reputation for themselves to officially end up in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Also added are the origins of these words. Let us know what you think about these words, and whether you think they deserve a place in the dictionary you probably grew up with.

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